Monday, January 30, 2017

The hardest part of moving into a new home? (I mean, aside from the whole selling the old place and finding the new place. Or remembering your new address. Or driving home only to find you're in the wrong place....)

If you're a beader, it's got to be the whole process of packing up your bead room. Dear heavens. Talk about getting slapped in the face with your hoarding tendencies!

But then you get to the new place and discover all the treasures you forgot about, including the Un Finished Objects that had been stashed at the bottom of the drawer or in the back of the closet. I found a couple that would work up pretty quickly, so here they are, the first completed UFOs of 2017!

First up, some cabochons that I had glued to backing, in order to embroider the into a pair of earrings. They sat on the backing, unfinished, for an embarrassingly long time. When I finally got back to them, one of the purple glass cabochons had cracked, so a matched pair of earrings were out.

So, with the addition of a nice little jade round, the earring and a half became a pendant.

The second UFO was a red jasper cab that I had prepped as an illustration for a class that I taught. About 15 years ago. Yep. It only had the peyote bezel, with no backing or edging. With the addition of modest fringe (I am SO not a fringe gal) and a necklace of faceted carnelian, faceted glass, and coconut heishi with an antique brass toggle clasp, she's ready to come out of the drawer.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Hoo boy! If the road to perdition is paved with good intentions, my plans for making regular blog posts over the past seven months has me more than halfway down the road...

Lots has happened over the past few months (sold our house, bought a new place, moved, been asked to step into my former boss' position on an interim basis, took an anniversary trip to Paris), but I'm going to pick up the blogging where I left off -- smack in the middle of summer show season.

Each show has its learning opportunities. For example, I learned that all the time saved by my neighbor artist when she set up the display of her whimsical bird houses in the open air instead of under a tent was equaled out each morning, when she had to spend quite a while cleaning the bird poop off of her pieces. Lesson One: there is no real shortcut in display setup.

The next show had no advance set up - rather, we were to arrive at 6 am to set up for a 10 am open. It was raining. A lot. And I was alone. I got my tent up enough to shelter the rest of my stuff, unloaded completely, and went off to park the car. I came back to discover that my spot was near a blocked storm drain, so that all the water draining down the street was pooling at the back of of my tent and those near me. God bless the volunteers who tracked down shovels and brooms to clear the dam and keep us from floating away! And thank goodness I had "borrowed" a straw fedora from my husband that morning so that I could stuff my rain-soaked hair up underneath and look (at least in my own mind) cute and stylish despite having been soaked all morning. Lesson Two: rain + show setup = bring extra shoes and a cute hat.

The after effect of all the rain became obvious as the sun came out and the show opened. Across the street from my tent, I saw this:

Take a closer look:

See it?

Killer tree!! Killer tree!! Yes, they moved the artist for everyone's safety.

This was a fun show (once I dried out from setup), and a good one. People were engaged with the art, enthusiastic about being there, and willing to buy things that they liked.

My favorite show of the season was held in a park on the shore of Lake Michigan. This was the view out of the front of my tent:

And this was the view out of the rear of my tent:

Not a bad place to spend a weekend! And though there were no Jingly Men, the music was great, the weather was lovely, and I went home with less jewelry than I came with. This was also where I learned Lesson Three: a tent that's near the boat launch will regularly be subjected to diesel or exhaust fumes from the trucks hauling said boats to the aforementioned launch. Nice views sometimes entail health hazards...

So another show season done. More lessons learned, and more fun memories. Next time, I'll share some of my latest work.